Bangalore airport, 3am: a porter takes my bag to a parking lot, stares in the darkened window of a car, starts knocking, knocking, knocking. My driver is asleep in there, fully reclined.

We peel down the two-line highway, riding directly above the dashed line, one of the last visible lane dividers I'll see in India. Signs along the road remind us to "Use lane discipline." It's warm in December, like Florida or Hawaii.

He wants a cup of tea so we pull off at a roadside shanty where a few guys are tailgating and others stand around smoking. He goes behind the car and pisses in a gutter, then disappears into the speakeasy for a long while. "Two minutes," he says. He comes back ten minutes later and we zip into town.

I thought we were still in the outskirts when we arrived in the city center: low, ramshackle buildings hung at the sides of the streets. The Comfort Inn sign blazed out of nowhere. Hotel staff snapped to attention and ushered me to my room. Except that the shower was not divided from the toilet, everything was as in a Western hotel. I slept like a dead dog.